Alexis de Toqueville warned that when democratic populism collapses, when it no longer permits its citizens to engage in a meaningful way politically, it is replaced by an empty cultural populism. This cultural populism, he said, is characterized by the trivial—a bland uniformity, expressions of bitterness and resentment and a mindless patriotism. He called this democratic despotism. It is a world of depoliticized citizens hermetically sealed inside a banal cultural and intellectual vacuum.
